


Painting The Town Black and Blue

by SociallyUnacceptableOrb



Category: Kirby (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Nightmare Is A Lazy Dick in All Universes, Oh Look More Rare Character Interactions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-06 22:42:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15895617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SociallyUnacceptableOrb/pseuds/SociallyUnacceptableOrb
Summary: Nightmare decides he hasn't been enough of a dick recently and decides to remedy this the only way Nintendo villains know how, by kidnapping the female ruler of a sovereign state.





	Painting The Town Black and Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Trying a new writing style, lemme know if you like it. Also, no, I haven't forgotten about Flores Amarillas. I'm planning on updating that Saturday!

The sun descended on the banks of Indigo Ocean, its gentle rays beating against the sand and seafoam as it crossed the west horizon. The nocturnal Bronto Burts came out of their nests and flapped across the starry sky as the native Waddle Dees retired into their homes. Everything was still and at peace on this quiet night.

And what a lovely night it was! Of course, when you make day and night yourself, it’s not like it could ever be anything less than perfect. Unless maybe you overslept, or you were a perfectionist, or something to that extent. Either way, with the constellations lighting up the sky as the sun fully dipped below the waves, Elline was at peace.

If only the same could be said for her friend, Claycia. Elline turned around when she heard a short, sharp yell. The poor girl had attempted to go to bed early after a tiring day of sculpting, but she was now having an awful fit in her sleep. Elline immediately flew over to her side to remedy this situation.

“Hey! Hey! Claycia! Claycia, wake up!” She gently shook her friend. “It’s only a bad dream! Wake up!”

And Claycia awoke with a start, nearly headbutting Elline in the face as she gasped for air. “Ellie… it was awful!” She grabbed the sides of her head and whimpered “Dark Crafter came back… he squashed you into goop! I tried to stop him, but I…but-!”

“No! Don’t apologize! I’m fine, it wasn’t real,” Elline assured her. “See? I’m perfectly fine!” She twirled around in the air and posed for effect. “No goopy fairies here!” But she could see Claycia was still shaken up by what she saw, and she rested a hand on her shoulder. “If you want me to stay on the Bastron tonight, I can.”

“No, no.” Claycia sniffled back her tears. “It’s fine. I just… it’s been a while since I’ve had a nightmare that was that bad, you know?” She molded herself a pillow and quilt, and Elline caught what she was getting at. She quickly painted them both, and they sprung into reality, the perfect amount of warm and fuzzy for her.

“Thanks.” Claycia said, and Elline gave her a gentle peck on the forehead. But then, there was something off in the distance that caught her eye. Something spherical and glowing, like a disco ball. A disco ball with a menacing air about it. As Claycia nodded off, she darted after it, curious as to what exactly it was.

Well, whatever it was, it seemed to notice that she’d taken notice, and it quickly sped up and started zigzagging through the tropical forest. Looking closer, she saw that it was coated in stars and seemed to be fluctuating blue and purple.

“What _is_ this thing?” she asked herself.

The orb made its getaway though a portal in the sky, and Elline followed suit. There was a great white flash, and all at once, Elline found herself in Dreamland. At least, she was assuming it was Dreamland. Things were exponentially less blocky and claylike here, and come to think of it, a giant ball made of stars and glowsticks probably would feel right at place here.

She’d ended up in a small forested area surrounded by neon pink trees. Flowing rainbow waterfalls filled a massive lake, and in the center of this lake was a rose gold fountain, which had a star-shaped wand placed atop a decorative centerpiece. The glittering mist that emitted from the wand mingled with the froth from the overflowing fount and created an absolutely gorgeous spray-bow. Elline had never felt such a mixture of amazement and befuddlement before in her life.

Sure, it was very pretty, but it would have been nice to know _where_ exactly in Dreamland she was. A sharp wind picked up behind her, and Elline gasped and shivered, rubbing herself to try and get warm. Perhaps it would have done her better to turn around and she what was causing it, for in a matter of seconds, she was grabbed up by something cold and bony, and a dark curtain obscured her sight. Elline screamed and slammed her eyes shut as the howling wind grew louder and louder…

And then, it stopped.

She opened her eyes again, and for a moment, thought she was still at the fountain. Well, she was at _a_ fountain, but it looked like it was a terrifying mockery of the prior one.

Where there were trees and color, there was stone and dark monochrome, with rocky spires hanging from the ceilings. The only light in the place came from holes in the cavern’s ceiling, and even then, it did little to illuminate the place. Instead of a star-shaped wand, there was a rather massive sword’s hilt that seemed to have been forcibly shoved into the centerpiece, and it was covered in brambles.

In fact, the bottom of the fountain was covered in brambles and gnarled branches, which Elline assumed were the only things keeping it together, being that the bottom was so cracked, it looked like it was about to fall to bits. The fountain in the center was significantly larger than the previous one, with jagged tiers ascending like a pyramid, which itself was stacked upon a tower of boulders than stretched down into a seemingly endless abyss. The water inside of it was ink black, and appeared to be grimier, if the stains on the dry sections of the pyramid were any indication.  

She’d managed to get a pretty impressive bird’s-eye view of everything, being that she had been trapped in a cage. The cage itself loosely hung by a chain, which also seemed to stretch up into nothingness. Elline sighed deeply, this really wasn’t how she was planning on spending her night. She just hoped that Claycia wouldn’t get too worried about her.

* * *

“WHERE IS ELLINE?!” Claycia yelled.

“How should I know where your stupid friend is?” Ordinarily he’d be politer, but considering he’d just had the floors buffed and waxed hours before she’d ripped his castle apart looking for Elline, he felt like he had every right to be upset. “Maybe she’s, oh, I don’t know, in her own stinkin’ kingdom? Just because she’s not next to you 24/7 doesn’t mean something happened!”

“Don’t play coy!” Claycia yelled again. “You probably kidnapped her, so you could guilt trip her into annexing Seventopia to Dreamland!

“You don’t annex a kingdom! You annex a country! And besides, Seventopia is another dimension, you can’t _do_ anything with it!”

“Hey, Dedede!” a third, unknown voice rang out.

“WHAT?!” Both monarchs shouted, and then instantly regretted it. It was Kirby, with an armful of letters, waddling up to the two.

“Dedede, I keep getting your mail. I don’t even get how that’s possible.” Kirby looked up from the letters and saw the two mid-clash, Heavy Knight’s sword against his hammer. “Oh, hey, Claycia! You two finally came to visit Dreamland?”

“Kirby!” Claycia finally put down her sword, and Dedede gave a sigh of relief. “Have you seen Elline anywhere?”

“No.” Kirby said. “Why? Did something bad happen?” It was at that point, Kirby realized that he’d not only entered through a Clayica-shaped hole in the wall rather than a door, King Dede had a fresh black eye, and there were scattered Waddle Dees and an unconscious Heavy Knight on the ground. “Something bad happened.”

“Ya think?” Dedede asked. He rested his hammer on his shoulder and shot a death-glare at Claycia. “At least she had the decency not to smash my teleporter and pummel me over a slice of cake!”

“It was an accident!” Kirby cried defensively, but Dedede huffed, still sore over the previous incident. Kirby turned to the girl next. “Claycia, when was the last time you saw Elline?”

Claycia thought to herself. “Last night. I saw her last night, we’d just finished creating a new mountain range before bedtime. I tucked in early, but I was woken up by a bad dream…” She shook her head, as if that would somehow help her reform the memory. “Before I fell asleep again, I saw her flying off after something. I haven’t seen her since.”

Dedede blinked in disbelief. “And you think I whisked her away after that. Yeah, that makes total sense.” He rolled his eyes. “Like I’d really attack some random girl I don’t even know just for the heck of it!”

“Kirby tells me that you shot somebody out of the sky for a prank, once.” Claycia said.

“He was an immortal cluster of stars! He was mostly just annoyed after the fact.” Dedede retorted, crossing his arms. Weird. He felt some sort of ironic _déjà vu_ all of a sudden. “Kirby, what do you make of it?”

Even weirder was Kirby’s expression. His eyes were glazed over, and he seemed to be having a staring contest with the wall as the gears turned in his head. “I think I know who’s behind this.” he quietly mumbled.

* * *

One teensy pebble had found its way into Elline’s cage. She wasn’t sure exactly how it had found its way in here but tossing it against the bars in boredom gave her something to do as she sat and wondered where she was, or who had taken her. The sixty-eighth time she tossed it, the pebble whiffed past the wide-set bars and fell down into the abyss below, a very tiny click echoing throughout the cavern.

The bars! How foolish had she been to not assume that she could get through them? She transformed into her slimmer paintbrush from and slid her handle through the bars. She soon realized why she hadn’t thought of it before as she got stuck, her head slamming against the sides and just about choking her. If that wasn’t enough, she could hear a distant metal clicking; somebody was coming in! Quickly, she weaseled back into the cage smacking hard into the bars.

“Curse my exaggerated body proportions!” she whispered hoarsely as she saw her captor enter.  He was a pale blue and tall, barely able to fit through the hole where he’d entered and wrapped in a cape as dark as the night sky with two sets of spiked cauldrons on each shoulder. The only hints of color to his dismal get-up came in the form of a golden pendant and a horned circlet, both accented with rubies. He floated to her side, and Elline felt another strong gust of wind chill her as he came closer.

“Are you comfortable?” Somehow, he spoke without moving his mouth, his voice echoing in Elline’s head. “I must apologize, I don’t have many guests over.” He bowed reverently, two bony arms protruding from his cloak as he gently took Elline’s cage in his hand. He absolutely dwarfed her, and she was finding it hard to say anything as he stared down at her, his pointed shades glinting menacingly.

“How do you do?” She asked, deeming it best to show politeness to whatever this thing was. Maybe he wouldn’t maul her if she was nice. “My name is Elline. What do you call yourself?”

It seemed to work, as the voice in her head was significantly less menacing (and a whole lot less shrill). “Nightmare.” He flashed a smile, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth. “Charmed, I’m sure.”

Very, very big and razor-sharp teeth.

“Mhm!” she furiously nodded. “It’s really great to meet such a… big guy like yourself! And don’t worry about the clutter, my place is just as messy!” Sucking up to him had to work, right?

Nightmare didn’t respond, rotating the cage between two fingers and getting a good look at her. “Soft pastels, rosy cheeks, sweet little doe eyes.” His smile quickly faded. “No wonder Kirby’s decided to make friends with you. You’re cut from the same cutesy cloth.”

“Kirby?” Elline asked. “You know Kirby?” She couldn’t imagine such a creepy guy being buddy-buddy with such a ball of sunshine, but Kirby always had a knack for looking past the surface. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.

“If you’re referring to the candy floss bane of my existence, then yes.” He let go of the cage, and it precariously swung from side to side. “It should be a scream watching him scramble to save you.”

Then again, maybe you _could_ judge a book by its cover. Elline hated to do this, but she saw no other choice than to bluff and hope it would buy her enough time. “I’m sure you don’t have to go to all this trouble! Kirby’s probably asleep right now, you can just scare the pants off him without a hitch!” She giggled nervously. “You know… if he’s wearing pants.”

“I catch on fire when I’m in sunlight.”

Well, there went that escape attempt. “Oh. I see.” Elline looked down at the floor of her cage. “That sounds awful.”

“Once you get past the fetor of decaying black magic all about you, it’s actually not so bad.” Nightmare stated. “And it’s _nothing_ compared to light magic ripping you to shreds, at least the former can be fixed with a quick dip in there.”

He pointed towards the overfilled fountain. “The Spring of Tantibus.” He grabbed the chain of her cage and dragged her closer to it. Looking closer, she could see that it was frothing and bubbling like a witch’s cauldron. Nightmare began to slowly lower her cage in. “Even one drop from this fountain can curse whoever dares enter it with eternal unpleasant dreams!”

“No! Don’t!” Elline shrieked, to which Nightmare responded with a sly grin. He pulled her cage from the water and held it close to his face.

“Now, do you get the picture? You’re the bait in this trap. And Kirby will have no choice to chomp down, and he’ll bite off more than he can chew!”

That tore it. “Kirby’s not going to back down to some bully, do you hear me?! He’ll kick your sorry blue backside all the way to Florala! AND YOUR FACE LOOKS LIKE A BROKEN VIOLIN WITH TEETH!”

“Wow. You’ve got the venomous tongue of a snake.” He flatly uttered, sarcasm dripping off his words like the bottom of Elline’s cage dripped the… fear swamp-water. “It doesn’t matter. Words are just words.” He released the chain, and it flew back and went slack like a bungee cord, tossing Elline around inside. Her head was still spinning as he continued on. “And you’re mine now.”

That last remark was punctuated with an evil cackle, as he disappeared into the shadows. All Elline could do was sit and wait for him to come back.

Maybe she could count the stalactites on the ceiling, or something.


End file.
